How Do Hunters Hunt Wild Boar? Survey on Wild Boar Hunting Methods in the Federal State of Lower Saxony

High wild boar population densities lead to demands for a population reduction to avoid crop damages or epidemic diseases. Along with biological studies, a better understanding of the human influence on wildlife and on wildlife management is important. We conducted inquiries on hunting methods and on hunters’ attitudes in the Federal State of Lower Saxony, Germany, to better understand hunting strategies and the influence on increasing wild boar population, as well as to underpin game management concepts. Single hunt, especially at bait, is still the most widely used method for hunting wild boar. The proportion of drive hunts within the hunting bag is increasing. The proportions of hunting methods vary regionally due to wild boar densities, geographical features (vegetation, terrain, etc.) and hunters’ practices. Hunters increased the proportion of conjoint hunts on wild boar. Baiting remains an important hunting method in wild boar management and the proportion of drive hunts should be fostered. Private hunting is important for wild boar management, although it is just insufficient. Additionally, administrative wildlife managers are recommended for the near future as coordinators of wild boar management, and as such, could manage hunting, the incorporation of regional conditions and investigating hunters’ attitudes and abilities.

Object Detection and Movement Tracking Using Tubelets and Faster RCNN Algorithm with Anchor Generation

Object detection in images and videos has become an important task in computer vision. It has been a challenging task due to misclassification and localization errors. The proposed approach explored the feasibility of automated detection and tracking of elephant intrusion along forest border areas. Due to an alarming increase in crop damages resulted from movements of elephant herds, combined with high risk of elephant extinction due to human activities, this paper looked into an efficient solution through elephant’s tracking. The convolutional neural network with transfer learning is used as the model for object classification and feature extraction. A new tracking system using automated tubelet generation and anchor generation methods in combination with faster RCNN was developed and tested on 5,482 video sequences. Real-time video taken for analysis consisted of heavily occluded objects such as trees and animals. Tubelet generated from each video sequence with intersection over union (IoU) thresholds have been effective in tracking the elephant object movement in the forest areas. The proposed work has been compared with other state-of-the-art techniques, namely, faster RCNN, YOLO v3, and HyperNet. Experimental results on the real-time dataset show that the proposed work achieves an improved performance of 73.9% in detecting and tracking of objects, which outperformed the existing approaches.

Water-related impacts on agriculture due to climate change: a review with reference to Kerala.

Climate change has arisen as the most pressing global challenge of the 21st century. The impending challenges may be associated with water resources management. Water-related impacts due to climate change are ranging from water scarcity to intense floods. The state of Kerala has witnessed severe floods in the last two years owing to Extreme Rainfall Events (ERE), among which the prominent ones are the events that occurred in August 2018. The extent of human and livestock mortalities, crop damages and economic losses due to the floods was enormous. This paper critically reviews the scientific studies and reports on impacts of climate change which profiting generalists bothered with environmental challenges. The article highlights the need for water conservation, risk management, and the development of mitigation measures to cope with the water-related impacts of climate change on agriculture. Keywords—climate change, flood, drought.

Taxonomy and Identification of Principal Foliar Nematode Species (Aphelenchoides and Litylenchus)

Nematodes are Earth’s most numerous multicellular animals and include species that feed on bacteria, fungi, plants, insects, and animals. Foliar nematodes are mostly pathogens of ornamental crops in greenhouses, nurseries, forest trees, and field crops. Nematode identification has traditionally relied on morphological and anatomical characters using light microscopy and, in some cases, scanning electron microscopy (SEM). This review focuses on morphometrical and brief molecular details and key characteristics of some of the most widely distributed and economically important foliar nematodes that can aid in their identification. Aphelenchoides genus includes some of the most widely distributed nematodes that can cause crop damages and losses to agricultural, horticultural, and forestry crops. Morphological details of the most common species of Aphelenchoides (A. besseyi, A. bicaudatus, A. fragariae, A. ritzemabosi) are given with brief molecular details, including distribution, identification, conclusion, and future directions, as well as an updated list of the nominal species with its synonyms. Litylenchus is a relatively new genus described in 2011 and includes two species and one subspecies. Species included in the Litylenchus are important emerging foliar pathogens parasitizing trees and bushes, especially beech trees in the United States of America. Brief morphological details of all Litylenchus species are provided.

Landuse and Community-based Assessment of 2014 Flood Damages in Tehsil Phalia, Punjab

In this study the response and feedback from the flood-hit community of Phalia (Mandi Bahauddin) obtained through local interviews and filling of questionnaires have been analyzed. Secondary data were obtained from Pakistan meteorological and local revenue departments were also statistically analyzed. Several types of damages including houses, crops, diseases, economic loss, and livestock have been considered. Pre- and Post-flood changes in the landuse, by high resolution satellite data (Landsat 8 OLI) delineated coverage of inundation of 186.85 km2 area. It has been demonstrated that Phalia tehsil was severely damaged in 2014 rainfall induced flood in Chenab river which left lasting impacts on the socio-economic lives of local communities. The major damages experienced by the people of the study area included; house damages, crop damages, diseases, economic losses and livestock damages. It is necessary that government revises the flood prevention policies based on the community response to mitigate the disaster

Extensive Support System and Knowledge Base for Improvised Geoponics Using Convolutional Neural Network Based Deep Learning

Farming can either be envisaged as a complex multistep process or a linear and recursive feedback loop. In both cases, it requires great effort and cost to produce crops initially. Farmers have extensive knowledge about the crop they are growing, and they must know about the product, but sometimes it so happens that the farmers do not have at par and updated knowledge about the current growth form of the product. The loss per hectare of cultivation has been exponentially increasing over time due to extensive crop damages and failures. Our model suggests an overall algorithm to provide wholesome support and information to the producer may that be a farmer or someone who wishes to take up farming as a hobby. The CNN based model identifies the plant using fine-grain details like location data, timestamp, and state of harvest. Alongside the identification model, a similar model runs parallelly to identify any diseases that might be visible and also provides necessary steps to get rid of the same. Hence providing a safe and low-risk path towards mass producing a certain crop.

Wild boar management (Sus scrofa L.) in the Republic of Serbia

Wild Boar is an autochthonous big game species important for the domestic hunting sector. In the past decades this species is increasing in number across Europe, which influences the extent of crop damages and intensity of the human-wildlife conflict. In this study Wild Boar hunting management was analyzed both at the national and regional level. For that purpose data from management plans of 272 hunting grounds were used. Beside the management plans, this study includes a survey of 377 hunters. The results indicate that Wild Boar population abundance is increasing in the Republic of Serbia, partially because the planned and realized shooting are not harmonized. There are differences in hunting management between the regions of Vojvodina and Central Serbia. The survey has shown that among domestic hunters Wild Boar is a popular game species, especially due to the attractive way of hunting.

Evidence of genetic hybridization of the wild boar and the indigenous black pig in northern Greece

In Greece both the black indigenous pig and the wild boar are considered as species of valuable genetic diversity while their products achieve a valuable market price. However, many crop damages are recorded, with farmers to claim that wild boar hybrids are responsible. On the other hand, black pig classification is based on phenotypic characteristics, which does not ensure breed?s homogeneity in case of hybridization. Using the PCR-RFLP methodology, pig samples (n=135) from different rearing situations (feral boars, semi-extensive black pigs and extensive wild boars) were examined in order to identify whether or not hybridization exists. In the examined feral population of wild boar a 26% of hybrids was noted, while in the case of the extensive farming population of wild pigs a hybridization of 11.76% was observed. Interestingly, in both cases of the examined black pigs? populations, a mentionable hybridization with wild boar was observed, reflecting probably an implemented breeding practice or uncontrolled mating with wild boars. A pivotal level (5-7%) of inbreeding rate was also noted in the examined populations. The immediate removal of hybrids from all the examined populations should be achieved, in order to prevent and eliminate further introgression, genetic depression and loss of genetic diversity for both populations of wild boar and black pig. Finally, the applied methodology may be used by state authorities or certifying organizations to test, control or inspect farms rearing wild boar or black pig populations in order to record and eliminate hybridization events between them.